Yesterday I Set a Minor Writing Record

Believe it or not, while I have now written for 686 consecutive days I have not had a whole lot of consecutive days over 1,000 words. For the entire streak, I have averaged 870 words/day, under the 1,000 word-mark that I have been aiming to get to this year. I have also had several “micro-streaks” in which I went 6, 7, 8, or 9 consecutive days writing at least 1,000 words. But until yesterday, such micro-streaks have never been longer than 9 days.

Yesterday that changed.

The 1,500 words I wrote yesterday evening (after a very long day which included taking the Little Man to fencing class, running to Home Depot to buy a dozen bags of mulch and then spreading that mulch around the backyard, taking the Little Man to his birthday bowling party where 23 other kids ran wild; spending the afternoon and evening with friends while our kids continued to run wild) put me over that 9-day threshold. For the first time since I started trying to write every day way back in February 2013, I have actually written more than 1,000 words/day for the last 10 consecutive days.

This is another way of saying that the novel draft is going gangbusters. It now stands somewhere between 16-17,000 words, most of which have been written in the last 10 days or so. It will be interesting to see how long the 1,000 word+ days will continue. They are not easy to achieve, mostly because of time constraints. Writing 1,000 words takes me, on average, about 40 minutes–although that average is down to 36 minutes over the last 10 days–and it isn’t always easy to find 36 minutes in my day. But I’ve been making the time, more often than not but cutting back on social media. And so far, so good.

A few more upcoming milestones

A couple of additional milestones are almost upon me, so I’ll mention them here:

1. On Father’s Day (June 21–also the first day of summer) I will hit 700 consecutive days of writing. After that, only 63 more days before I topple Barry Bonds’ home run record, with 763 consecutive days of writing. I think that happens sometime in late August.

2. As of yesterday, I have written 596,047 words over the course of my consecutive day writing streak. That means I am less than 4,000 words away from 600,000 words. Assuming I can keep up a minimum 1,000 words/day for the next 4 days, I’ll hit that milestone either Wednesday or Thursday of this week. 600,000 words in less than 2 years is more than six times what I wrote in the entire 20 years before I started this streak of mine. For me, at least, it definitely pays to write every day, if for no other reason than because I am getting a lot of practice in.